Stalin's Daughter

by Rosemary Sullivan

  Alexei Kosygin: premier in 1964 after ouster of Khrushchev; shared power with Brezhnev as part of collective leadership; died in 1980.

  Mikhail Suslov: second secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; Party’s chief ideologue; in 1966 refused Svetlana permission to marry Singh; died in 1982.

  KGB AGENTS:

  Vasiliy Fedorovich Sanko: kidnapped Evdokia Petrova, wife of KGB officer Vladimir Petrov, in 1954; reputed to have been sent to kidnap Svetlana in 1967.

  Viktor Louis (Vitaly Yevgenyevich Lui): pirated Svetlana’s Twenty Letters to a Friend and sold it to Flegon Press in London; sold family photos to Stern magazine.

  George Kurpel: possible KGB agent; attempted to engineer defection of Svetlana’s son, Joseph Alliluyev, in 1975.

  Husband and Relatives in the United States:

  Wesley Peters: head architect, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation: married to Svetlana from 1970 to 1972; died in 1991.

  Senator Samuel Hayakawa: English professor; president of San Francisco State University; US Senator for California from 1977 to 1983; died 1992; wife, Marge (Margedant), sister of Wesley Peters.

  Olga Margedant Peters (Chrese Evans): Svetlana’s daughter with Wesley Peters; born in San Rafael, California, in 1971.

  TALIESIN FOUNDATION:

  Olgivanna Wright: born Olga Ivanovna Lazovich in Montenegro in 1897; third wife of Frank Lloyd Wright (married in 1928); student of G. I. Gurdjieff; ran the Taliesin Fellowship from Wright’s death in 1959 until her own death in 1985.

  Iovanna Wright: only child of Frank Lloyd and Olgivanna Wright.

  Svetlana (Hinzenberg) Wright: daughter of Olgivanna and first husband, Valdemar Hinzenberg; married Wesley Peters in 1934; died with her son, Daniel, in a car crash in 1946.

  Brandoch Peters: born in 1941; son of Wesley and Svetlana Peters; survived a car crash at age five; cellist and failed cattle farmer.

  LOVERS IN THE UNITED STATES:

  Louis Fischer: journalist; author of ten books, including 1952 biography of Stalin; professor at Princeton, affiliated with the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs when he met Svetlana in 1969.

  Max Hayward: professor of Soviet literary politics at St. Antony’s College, Oxford; translator of Doctor Zhivago and Svetlana’s 1967 article “To Boris Leonidovich Pasternak.”

  Tom Turner: fifty-two-year-old businessman and Dominican tertiary (lay brother); died of cancer in 1989, a year after Svetlana and he began a relationship.

  FRIENDS IN THE UNITED STATES:

  Marie Anderson: friend in Spring Green, Wisconsin.

  Arkady Belinkov: sentenced to death age twenty-three as anti-Soviet; reprieved: spent twelve years in the Gulag; fled with his wife, Natalia, to West Germany in 1968, and to the United States.

  Douglas Bushnell: wealthy Princeton businessman who briefly played substitute father to Svetlana’s daughter Olga in Princeton in 1977.

  Paul Chavchavadze: Georgian prince from the Caucasus; fled to England and then to the United States in 1934; translated Only One Year; his wife, Nina, was the daughter of the tsar’s uncle.

  Michael Coyne: son of Elizabeth Coyne, Svetlana’s close friend in Spring Green.

  Joan Kennan: daughter of George Kennan; hosted Svetlana in the summer of 1967.

  Priscilla Johnson McMillan: journalist specializing in Soviet affairs; translator of Twenty Letters to a Friend; Svetlana stayed at father’s residence on her arrival in the United States.

  Thomas Miller: American volcanologist, made annual trips to Kamchatka.

  Walter Pozen: lawyer; second husband of Joan Kennan; helped sort Svetlana’s finances.

  Kathy Rossing: daughter of Elizabeth Coyne, Svetlana’s close friend in Spring Green.

  Rosa Shand: met Svetlana in Princeton; introduced her to Terry Waite and Quaker Friends’ School.

  Edmund Wilson: eminent critic of American literature; Russian expert.

  In England:

  Sir Isaiah Berlin: Russo-British philosopher, writer, translator; held professorships at Harvard and Oxford; facilitated Svetlana’s move to England in 1982.

  Mary Burkett: lived at Isel Hall in Cockermouth, England; world specialist on felt making.

  Philippa Hill: widow of a well-known physicist; neighbor on Chaucer Road, Cambridge.

  Linda and Laurence Kelly: neighbors in Cambridge: he wrote studies of Alexander Griboyedov and Mikhail Lermontov.

  Nina Lobanov-Rostosky: neighbor in London; her husband’s father was killed under Stalin.

  Malcolm Muggeridge: British media personality, notorious for his conservative Christian propagandizing; hosted TV interview with Svetlana in 1981; wife, Kitty.

  Lady (Jane) Renfrew: Cambridge professor and archaeologist; neighbor on Chaucer Road.

  Rosamond Richardson: author, friend in Saffron Walden; wrote The Long Shadow: Inside Stalin’s Family, in 1993, initially with Svetlana’s cooperation.

  Lady (Vanessa) Thomas: London friend; lived near Ladbroke Grove; husband, historian Sir Hugh Thomas.

  Vera Suvchinskaya Traill: Russian émigrée; her grandfather was minister of war in Russia’s Provisional government.

  JOURNALISTS:

  Patricia Blake: journalist; member of the Princeton circle of friends; Svetlana regarded her as a chief enemy for the Time magazine article on her return to the USSR.

  George Krimsky: AP; attempted to help Joseph Alliluyev defect in 1975.

  Tony Lucas: New York Times; exposed Robert Rayle as CIA officer in 1967 during flight from India.

  Sources

  Abbreviations of Names of Archives Cited

  US GOVERNMENT ARCHIVES

  NARA: National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD.

  CIA DB: CIA Crest Database, NARA, College Park, MD.

  LBJL, NSF: LBJ Presidential Library, National Security File, Intelligence File, Svetlana Alliluyeva.

  RRL: Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, FG 002, Peters, Lana.

  FBI: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Freedom of Information Act Request, Svetlana Alliluyeva née Svetlana Stalina, 1967–1985.

  RUSSIAN ARCHIVES

  GARF: Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (State Archive of the Russian Federation).

  RGASPI: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii (Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History).

  MEM: Arkhiv mezhdunarodnogo obshchestva “Memorial” (Archive of the Memorial Society International).

  BRITISH ARCHIVES

  NAUK: National Archives, United Kingdom, Foreign Office, Defectors, Soviet Union, Svetlana Stalin.

  GEORGIAN ARCHIVES

  AMIG: Archive of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Tbilisi, Georgia.

  UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES

  Katherina von Fraunhofer-Kosinski Collection of Jerzy Kosinski, Mark Weinbaum Papers, and Edmund Wilson Papers: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (BRB), Yale University.

  Letters of Isaiah Berlin, copyright © The Trustees of the Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust (IBLT) 2015, quoted with the permission of the Trustees.

  Meryle Secrest Collection, Hoover Institution Archives (HIA).

  George F. Kennan Papers (MC076), 1871–2005 (mostly 1950–2000), Public Policy Papers, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library (PUL).

  Louis Fischer Papers (MC024), 1890–1977 (mostly 1935–1969), Public Policy Papers, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library (PUL).

  Malcolm Muggeridge Papers, Special Collections, Wheaton College, Illinois (WCSC).

  Museums

  Muzei-kvartira Alliluyevykh (Apartment Museum of the Alliluyevs), Saint Petersburg.

  Muzei “Dom na naberezhnoi” (House on the Embankment Museum), Moscow.

  Moskovskaia obraztsovaia shkola 25 (Shkola 175) [Moscow Model School 25 (School 175)].

  Istoriko-memorial’nyi muzei “Smol’nyi” (Smolny Historical and Memorial Museum), Saint Petersburg.

&nbs
p; Joseph Stalin Museum, Gori, Georgia.

  Private Collections

  Letters from Alliluyeva in private collections (PC) of correspondents: Mary Burkett, Philippa Hill, Donald Jameson, Linda Kelly, Joan Kennan, Nina Lobanov-Rostovsky, Thomas Miller, Robert and Ramona Rayle, Rosa Shand, the Harper & Row Archive, and the HarperCollins Collection.

  Notes

  For abbreviations of archives, please refer to Sources.

  PREFACE

  1.Letter to Mary Burkett, Apr. 7, 2009, private collection (PC), Mary Burkett.

  2.Angela Lambert, Independent, Mar. 10, 1990: 29.

  3.Robert Tucker, “Svetlana Inherited Her Tragic Flaw,” Washington Post, Nov. 25, 1984, C1.

  4.Svetlana Alliluyeva, Only One Year, trans. Paul Chavchavadze (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 393.

  PROLOGUE : THE DEFECTION

  1.This account is a composite of details drawn from Alliluyeva, Only One Year; Robert Rayle, “Unpublished Autobiographical Essay,” PC, Rayle; author’s interview with Robert and Ramona Rayle, Ashburn, VA, July 18–19, 2013; Chester Bowles, “Memorandum for the Record; Subj: Defection of Svetlana Alliloueva [sic],” Mar. 15, 1967, NLJ/RAC 03-114, 26-B, LBJL; and Peter Earnest, “Peter Earnest in Conversation with Oleg Kalugin and Robert Rayle on Defection of Svetlana Alliluyeva,” Dec. 4, 2006. International Spy Museum, Washington, DC. www.spymuseum.org/exhibition-experiences/agent-storm/listen-to-the-audio/episode/the-litvinenko-murder-and-other-riddles-from-moscow.

  2.Alliluyeva, Only One Year, 199.

  3.Rayle, “Autobiographical Essay.”

  4.Bowles, “Memorandum.”

  5.Rayle, “Autobiographical Essay.” See also Bowles, “Memorandum.”

  6.Alliluyeva, Only One Year, 200. See also Rayle, “Autobiographical Essay.”

  7.Rayle, “Autobiographical Essay.”

  8.Bowles, “Memorandum.”

  9.Time line provided by Robert Rayle on calendar, March 1967, PC, Rayle.

  10.Bowles, “Memorandum.”

  11.Alliluyeva, Only One Year, 189.

  12.Bowles, “Memorandum.”

  13.Alliluyeva, Only One Year, 206.

  14.Author’s interview with Robert and Ramona Rayle, Ashburn, VA, July 18–19, 2013.

  15.Ibid.

  16.Rayle, “Autobiographical Essay.”

  17.Ibid.

  18.Ibid.

  CHAPTER 1: THAT PLACE OF SUNSHINE

  1.Svetlana Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters to a Friend, trans. Priscilla Johnson McMillan (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 36.

  2.Rosamond Richardson, The Long Shadow: Inside Stalin’s Family (London: Little, Brown, 1993), 119.

  3.Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (New York: Knopf, 2004), 34.

  4.Simon Sebag Montefiore, Young Stalin (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007), 119. Tbilisi is the historical name of the city. The name Tiflis(i) became common after Georgia became part of the Russian Empire in 1783. Tiflis was officially changed back to Tbilisi in 1936. Letter to author from Nestan Charkviani, Jan. 5, 2015.

  5.Montefiore, Young Stalin, 164–66.

  6.Ibid., 135.

  7.Ibid., 166.

  8.Robert Service, Stalin: A Biography (London: Macmillan, 2004), 233.

  9.Letter from Nadya Alliluyeva to Keke Djugashvili, Mar. 12, 1922, RGASPI, fond [stock] 558, opis [inventory] 11, doc. 1549, 40.

  10.Boris Gribanov, “I pamiat’-sneg letit i past’ ne mozhet: David Samoilov, kakim ia ego pomniu” [“And Memory as Snow Keeps Drifting: David Samoilov as I Remember Him”]. Znamia: Yezhemesiachnyi literaturno-khudozhestvennyi i obshchestvenno-politicheskii zhurnal [The Banner: A Monthly Literary, Artistic, and General Political Journal] 9 (2006): 160.

  11.Montefiore, Young Stalin, 18. According to Montefiore, “In 1925 [Stalin] ordered his secretary Tovstukha to formalize the 1879 date.” Montefiore speculates that Stalin had moved the date a year later to avoid conscription.

  12.Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 95.

  13.Ibid., 96.

  14.Ibid.

  15.Author’s interview with Chrese Evans, Portland, OR, July 18, 2012.

  16.Letter from N. S. Alliluyeva to M. O. Svanidze, Jan. 11, 1926, trans. Svetlana Alliluyeva, Meryle Secrest Collection, box 4, HIA.

  17.Kreml’-9 [Russian TV series] writers group, Svetlana Stalina: Pobeg iz sem’i [Svetlana Stalina: Escape from the Family], film, dir. Maksim Ivannikov, prod. Aleksei Pimanov, Oleg Vol’nov, and Sergei Medvedev (Telekompaniya “Ostankino” and Federal’naia sluzhba okhrany Rossiiskoi Federatsii [Federal Service for the Protection of the Russian Federation], 2003); hereafter Kreml’-9 writers, Svetlana Stalina: Escape from the Family.

  18.Svetlana Alliluyeva, “Letter to Ehrenburg,” Aug. 7, 1957, repr. Boris Frezinski, Pisateli i Sovetskie vozhdi [Writers and Soviet Leaders] (Moscow: Ellis Lak, 2008), 606.

  19.Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 223.

  20.Ibid., 29.

  21.Author’s interview with Stepan Mikoyan, Moscow, May 24, 2013.

  22.Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 30.

  23.Ibid., 110.

  24.Meryle Secrest interview with Svetlana Alliluyeva, London, 1994, Secrest Collection, audio recording, group 2, tape 28, HIA.

  25.Irina Kalistratovna Gogua, Transcription of Oral Stories, recorded by Irina Mikhailovna Chervakova, 1987–89, MEM, fond [stock] 1, opis [inventory] 3, delo [subject] 18, June 25, 1988, 63–64.

  26.Alliluyeva, Only One Year, 379.

  27.Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 32.

  28.Stepan Mikoyan, Memoirs of Military Test-Flying and Life with the Kremlin’s Elite: An Autobiography (London: Airlife Publishing, 1999), 35.

  29.Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 28.

  30.Ibid., 53.

  31.Anna Alliluyeva and Sergei Alliluyev, The Alliluyev Memoirs: Recollections of Svetlana Stalina’s Maternal Aunt Anna Alliluyeva and Her Grandfather Sergei Alliluyev, trans. David Tutaev (New York: Putnam’s, 1967), 74. Hereafter: Alliluyeva Memoirs.

  32.Ibid., 139.

  33.Richardson, Long Shadow, 114.

  34.Rosamond Richardson interview with Svetlana Alliluyeva, Saffron Walden, 1991, tape 3, PC, Richardson.

  35.Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 43–44.

  36.Ibid., 31.

  37.Ibid., 140.

  38.Ibid., 31.

  39.Ibid., 36.

  40.Ibid, 66.

  CHAPTER 2: A MOTHERLESS CHILD

  1.Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 107.

  2.Larissa Vasilieva, Kremlin Wives: The Secret Lives of the Women Behind the Kremlin Walls—from Lenin to Gorbachev (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1994), 52.

  3.Hiroaki Kuromiya, Stalin: Profiles in Power (London: Pearson Education, 2005), 95. During a show trial in November–December 1930, a group of so-called “industrial wreckers” and “bourgeois experts” were accused of “intentionally creating economic troubles,” “political terrorism,” and “conspiring with foreign powers, especially France.” Their “alleged terrorist plans . . . prompted the Politburo resolution.”

  4.Montefiore, Court of the Red Tsar, 16.

  5.Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 108–10. See also accounts by Service, Stalin, 292–93; Montefiore, Court of the Red Tsar, 3–22; and Edvard Radzinsky, Stalin, trans. H. T. Willetts (New York: Anchor, 1997), 287–89.

  6.Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 110.

  7.Montefiore, Court of the Red Tsar, 106. “There is a five-milimetre hole over the heart—an open hole. Conclusion—death was immediate from an open wound to the heart.” Secret report of Dr. Kushner, GARF 7523c.149a.2-1-6.

  8.This is nanny Alexandra Andreevna Bychkova’s report of that morning. Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 109.

  9.Montefiore, Court of the Red Tsar, 105; Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 112.

  10.Maria Svanidze, “Diary of 1933–37,” trans. Svetlana Alliluyeva, 19, Meryle Secrest Collection, box 3, HIA. In 1994, Svetlana Alliluyeva translated the diary of Maria Svanidze, released from the Archive of the Politburo, Communist Party of the Soviet Union, published in Istochnik, no. 1 (1993).


  11.Montefiore, Court of the Red Tsar, 12. See also Service, Stalin, 289.

  12.William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York: Norton, 2003), 85. She did however recommend Khrushchev to Stalin. “This was how I survived,” Khrushchev said. “Nadya was ‘my lottery ticket.’”

  13.Author’s interview with Alexander Alliluyev, Moscow, May 25, 2013. See also: “Mify o docheri Stalina,” Priamoi efir s Mikhailom Zelenskim [“Myths About Stalin’s Daughter,” Live with Mikhail Zelensky], Rossia-1, Moscow, Dec. 19, 2011; hereafter: “Myths,” Live with Mikhail Zelensky.

  14.Kuromiya, Stalin, 40–42.

  15.Letter to N. S. Alliluyeva, June 21, 1930, “To Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva Personally from Stalin: Correspondence 1928–31,” 7, trans. Svetlana Alliluyeva, Meryle Secrest Collection, box 3, HIA. When the correspondence (1928–31) between Nadezhda Alliluyeva and Stalin from Stalin’s personal archive was published by Istochnik in 1993, with commentary by Yu. Murin, Svetlana Alliluyeva personally translated the letters into English; she claimed copyright in 1994.

  16.Letter to J. V. Stalin, Aug. 28, 1929, p. 2, Secrest Collection, HIA.

  17.Alliluyeva, Twenty Letters, 104.

  18.Enzo Biagi, Svetlana: The Inside Story, trans. Timothy Wilson (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1967), 22.

  19.Kuromiya, Stalin, 91.

  20.Ibid., 97.

  21.Ibid., 108.

  22.Ibid.

  23.Letter from N. S. Alliluyeva to J. V. Stalin, Sept. 16, 1929, 4–5, Secrest Collection, HIA.

  24.Letter from J. V. Stalin to N. S. Alliluyeva, Sept. 23, 1929, 5, Secrest Collection, HIA.

  25.Letter from J. V. Stalin to Ordzhonikidze, Sept. 23, 1929, 16, Secrest Collection, HIA.

  26.Matthew Lenoe, Closer to the Masses: Stalinist Culture, Social Revolution and Soviet Newspapers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 209.